10/17/2010

Social Media for the Anti-social

I don't really like people. We'll, I don't like large groups of people. Parties, rallies, festivals, swap meets, chili eating contests, tupperware parties (for more than one reason). They just make me straight-up uncomfortable. So when this entire social media comes along, I ignore it. Sure it exists. Sure it's useful for all those social butterflies, but it isn't for me.

Then I starting reading about marketing. Social media and marketing seem to be the new peanut butter and jelly. To sum up what I've learned: if you target market uses the internet, use social media marketing.

So, what is a person to do if they have a Facebook page just to leave contact information and a Twitter account they were forced to create for an undergraduate class?

I have a test to run: take an anti-social person and force that person to use social media actively every day. I'm guessing that you either end up with a large amount of binge drinking OR a more social person (after all, we are how we consistently act, over large enough periods of time). At the very least, you'll end up with a better writer.

So the rules:

One blog post a day containing a topic that will be of interest outside of family or friends (no one other than your mother cares about what you had for lunch).

Three tweets a day linking to things you found interesting, with the same criteria as 1.

One update on Facebook and two responses to other peoples updates a day.

That is an interesting point. People who are already very social can (and do) find ways to be social, even before the internet. Social media make it more time-efficient for them to connect to an even larger group of people.

Anyone who is anti-social now has access to tools that find similar people in ways that do not involve direct face-to-face situations. I wonder how many people use it as such.

In regards to 'The Social Network,' if it is originally geared towards they anti-social, I can't say that it's working. Most of the images still seem to be of people doing keg stands at a frat party :).